The sweeping crackdown on dissent in China under Xi Jinping is well known. While most international media reports focus on repression against liberal dissidents it is not unusual for left activists also to be targeted. This is highlighted by an ongoing case in the southern province of Guangdong.

On 15 November, two youths taking part in a leftist reading circle at Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou, were arrested by police on the ridiculous pretext of “illegal business operations”. This was later changed to “gathering crowds to disturb social order”, a very common charge against worker activists and others. Half a month later, two organisers of the reading group were detained on the same charge. Four other participants are still wanted by the police.

At least seven of the eight youth are Maoists. The police raid seems to have resulted from the fact that during the meeting of the reading circle, participants discussed the 1989 democratic movement in China (which ended in the massacre of 4 June), and also criticised the widespread censorship operated today by the ruling CCP (so-called Communist Party).These are taboo topics in China.

The police action in Guangzhou is therefore not surprising, given the wider crackdown in China under Xi Jinping, the most ferocious phase of repression since 1989. But the Guangzhou case can have more complicated implications.

Xi has paid some superficial tributes to Mao Zedong, partly in an attempt to utilise Mao’s prestige among sections of the masses in order to consolidate his and the CCP’s rule. Not long after coming to power, Xi announced to a meeting of senior officials: “The history of the first 30 years (the Mao era) of the PRC must not be denied”. Such statements led some people to believe that China under Xi was ‘turning left’.

“Anti-China forces”

When targeting liberal bourgeois opponents, the regime claims these individuals collude with western “anti-China forces” to “subvert the socialist system”. Such, mostly fictitious, accusations can extract support from some nationalists.

But when accusing young people who support Mao Zedong of being “anti-CCP” this increases the political contradictions for the regime. It risks alienating the Maoist layer, who make up probably the largest part of left-leaning youth in China. They, while objecting to the restoration of capitalism in China, tend to give support to the regime on many issues (especially in rejecting ‘democracy’) because of a fundamentally nationalist approach.

Another and deeper reason for the police action is that the upturn in workers’ struggles is frightening the CCP dictatorship, especially when it has not eliminated the dark clouds of economic crisis. Three staff members from a well-known labour NGO in Guangdong were sentenced to harsh prison terms in 2016. So the growing number of young leftists, representing the radicalisation of the Chinese masses, and their attempts to propagandise ‘Marxism’ (although with lots of elements of Maoism), seems very dangerous to the CCP whose rule is based on “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”.
In 2014, students from some universities in the same district where the ‘15 November’ incident happened, offered help to a strike by 200 cleaners.

Following the crackdown on the Guangzhou reading group, hundreds of people including left supporters and liberals, signed a petition against the flagrant suppression of democratic rights and the developing workers’ struggles. This has encouraged other sections of left-leaning youth, who have undergone similar repression, to speak out, reporting their own experiences of repression by the authorities which was formerly unknown to the public.

Wave of online protest

This wave of protest has forced the police to suddenly stop the detentions and release the four on bail. However, they are still under surveillance and face police harassment, while four other fellow reading group members are still being hunted. At the same time, many left circles that have shown solidarity are being silenced and very possibly will face similar attacks in the near future.

The CWI and socialists internationally condemn the CCP regime’s brutal repression. We stand for full and genuine democratic rights for the masses in China and internationally. The struggle for real democracy is inseparably linked to the struggle for international socialism led by the working class. Dictatorial rule like that in China today is a tool to protect the capitalists’ profits: independent trade unions are banned, striking workers arrested and criminalised, migrant workers are super-exploited and also evicted from the big cities as part of ‘social cleansing’ for the purpose of gentrification, etc. Only a socialist society, democratically run by working people, can guarantee freedom of speech and all democratic rights.

Model protest letter

This protest letter/email can be sent to the Chinese embassy in your country.

“We are deeply concerned over the Chinese government’s persecution of eight left-wing youth, Zhang Yunfan, Sun Tingting, Zheng Yongming, Ye Jianke, Xu Zhongliang, Huang Liping, Han Peng and Gu Jiayue. They were detained or listed as wanted last November after a police raid against a reading circle held in Guangdong University of Technology. They were accused of “gathering crowds to disturb social order”, which is patently untrue. It seems that the real reason for this persecution is an attempt to ban political discussion on topics like the 1989 democratic movement. We urge the immediate dropping of charges and an end of persecutions against these eight youths.”

Just a few months ago, detailed allegations of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment first broke into the mainstream media. Courageous actresses took a stand against a powerful figure within a multi-billion dollar industry that normalizes sexism. This has sparked a new phase of a growing women’s movement which began with the explosive reaction to Trump’s election.

Even while #MeToo remains a primarily internet-driven mass discussion, its power has rocked the globe. A whole series of men in media and politics have been exposed, and many forced to resign. The Washington Post reports that the last time this many congressmen were driven from office was during the Civil War.

Even before the anti-Trump protests that kicked off 2017, there has been a steady flow of resistance from women to their abuse under capitalism. The Slutwalks, Carry That Weight, and #YesAllWomen all showed that young women are ready to fight back against sexism and abuse. These movements, as well as #MeToo, are part of an international revolt by women from Latin America to Eastern Europe.

Fighting Our Own Weinsteins

In the face of a seemingly endless flood of accusations, women worldwide are talking to their friends, families, and co-workers about their own experiences. The #MeToo collective uprising has already had a profound impact on society and politics, bringing front and center the need to stop sexual harassment in the workplace.

But it has opened another question: What about the tens of millions of women whose bosses and harassers are not famous people? What are we to do?

Sexual harassment in the workplace is widespread, underreported, and, in too many cases, results in retaliation against the victim. Women who come forward against harassment on the job are told to look to Human Resources or other internal company routes. Yet HR departments answer to the very companies that face liability. The choice for many women boils down to losing their jobs or enduring abuse.

Taking matters outside of company mediation means looking to a court system that has systematically failed women. The vast majority of workplace discrimination lawsuits – which includes sexual harassment – are dismissed by the courts. In fact, a study from the University of Cincinnati reported that only 4% of these suits result in awarding damages to the victim.

The federal agency that is supposed to deal with harassment complaints, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), is toothless. A new system needs to be set up where every workplace has a complaints officer, federally protected from employer retaliation; that complaints officer should be democratically elected and appointed by the workforce. The legal framework also needs to be radically overhauled. Among other things, a new system must void clauses in employee contracts that require mandatory company-run arbitration for complaints, meaning victims can’t go to court. It is estimated that more than half of American workers can’t take harassment claims to court because of these clauses. Of course the only guarantee that a new agency would also not become toothless is a mobilized and active workforce refusing to return to the past. This kind of serious approach to reform will be met with ferocious resistance from corporate America and will require a massive push from below.

Bringing #MeToo into the Streets

The most notorious sexual predator in the U.S. sits in the White House. The majority of Americans now believe Trump should resign because of the growing allegations of sexual harassment against him. The #MeToo campaign has a crucial role to play in the overall fight to drive Trump’s hateful administration out of office. This can be made concrete with massive #MeToo contingents at protests that have been called for January 20 – the one year anniversary of Trump’s presidency – as well as on International Women’s Day.

While the Republican Party pushes the brunt of legislation attacking women’s rights, claims of sexual harassment and assault have rocked both parties. Key figures in the Democratic Party seem to be determined to get on the right side of this issue after years of looking the other way. But is it enough to run a slate of candidates in the 2018 midterm election who do not have sexual harassment allegations against them? The real question is, what will the Democratic Party do to fight for the millions of women who do not have famous abusers? Are they prepared to take on entrenched corporate power that stands in the way of making meaningful change in our workplaces?

Unfortunately, there is little basis for confidence and plenty of history showing Democratic Party opposition to any serious threat to corporate power.

Already we’ve seen the defeat of predator Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race, which represented both a rejection of Trump’s agenda and of sexual abuse. It was also the first time a Democrat won a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years. But after defeating Moore, Democrat Doug Jones promptly went on CNN and stated that Trump should not resign because of his history of harassing and assaulting women – outrageously claiming that people need to “move on” rather than fight back.

Collective Action Against Harassment

#MeToo has harnessed enough power to demand major legal changes for women’s rights and workplace protections. This would be a pivotal next step, but the pandemic level of harassment shows we need to go further. We need to build a collective force in our workplaces that pushes back against harassment and bullying in all forms, against low pay and terrible working conditions. These conditions affect women workers disproportionately, but also millions of people of all genders.

Uniting around collective action that would shut down workplaces when sexual harassment is rampant would transform #MeToo into a monumental force for change. We can take inspiration from the struggles of working women in the past. In the 1830s in Lowell, Massachusetts, teenage girls working in textile mills, faced with pay cuts as well as sexual harassment and assault on the job, went on strike. This was the first female led labor struggle in American history, long before women even had the right to vote. These are the kind of steps we should look to today, and speak to the urgent need for a re-built labor movement that stands unabashedly on the side of all workers.

#MeToo could initiate a turning point in society with a more decisive rejection of sexual harassment, assault, and violence against women. However, it will require taking the palpable level of outrage and developing it into an organized movement on the ground and in our workplaces to win lasting changes in women’s lives.

A new chapter in the fight for women’s rights could be opened up through the courage that #MeToo has inspired. Yet history shows that our gains will be under constant attack. Socialists believe that to truly end the structural sexism which allows our bosses to harass us, we have to simultaneously fight the root cause: capitalism. We can create a new system and society which ends predatory capitalism, and is democratically run in the interests of all working people.

Struggle not only for a humane refugee policy and but also for a socialist society

Liv Shange Moyo, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (CWI Sweden)

Before the seasonal holidays began in Sweden, an historic strike against the deportation of refugees was organised. On December 12, at 12 o’clock, school students across the country – from Boden in the north to Ystad in the south – took part. At least 50 schools in 19 cities and towns were involved. The sense of strength and cohesion was overwhelming.

The strike’s show of strength could be a launch-pad for a sharpening of the ongoing struggle against the government’s divide-and-rule and deportation policy.

Globala Gymnasiet in Stockholm, the secondary school (16-18-year-olds) at which the initiative for the December 12 strike was taken, was basically emptied of students (only those who were sitting national examinations in maths remained). Assembled in the schoolyard, the Globala students started off with an hour of speeches there before joining students from 20 schools at the square Medborgarplatsen. In total, 2,000 participated at Medborgarplatsen for one and a half hours, despite snow-blown rain, winds and ice-cold.

Like Globala in Stockholm, Gymnasiebyn in Luleå served as a centre for the strike organising. The Students in ‘Let us Live – Young in Sweden’, Luleå had aimed at a “real” school strike since September, and started discussing it seriously in October. The fact that students in two cities worked together made a nationwide strike possible, and the two driving centres constantly spurred each other on.

Build-up

Long weeks of preparation strengthened the commitment of the young activists who carried out the strike. Because of that, the spread of the initiative could have its own life, especially in the last days before December 12 when a number of new schools and locations joined in – such as Tranås, Östersund, Ystad, Gävle and Umeå. Having a worked-out “kit” for strike organization, such as flyers, mobilisation lists, to-do lists, was a great help.

Eventually 4,000 took part in the strike, of whom 2,000 were in Stockholm, 500 in Gothenburg, 300 in Borås, 200 in Uppsala, and 150 each in Lund, Luleå, Boden and Piteå. 50 schools in 19 locations were affected, from north to south, east to west. These are impressive figures which sum up yet another historic step forward in the building of a fighting opposition to the Social Democratic and Green coalition government’s brutal migration policy.

More important than the numbers, however, is the weight of the strike as a weapon. The fact that school students ‘downed their tools’ as a protest is a guide to the kind of methods that are germinating and waiting to be taken up as the struggle grows.

Refugees and students organise

In 2015, more than 35,000 unaccompanied children came as refugees to Sweden. Not until this year did they begin to get news on decisions about permits or (mostly) deportations. In early August, young Afghan refugees started what became a 58 day long 24/7 out-door sit-down strike in Stockholm, spreading also to other cities. The sit-down strike called Ung i Sverige (Young in Sweden) started with a handful. At the peak, they were about one thousand, gaining increased support and putting pressure on the politicians.

The mood against deportations has also been nurtured by the provocations of both the state and the Nazis – the victorious anti-Nazi mobilization in Gothenburg on 30 September played a major role – both as inspiration and as a warning of the destructive forces fostered by state racism.

In line with the disclosures of arbitrary age revaluations and growing numbers of rejections of permit applications, the Migration Board’s credibility has been laid bare more and more, and this hardened the determination of the strike preparations. The beginning of a nationwide organisation has shown its strength – when many combine their strength, they can turn the situation around by pulling the heaviest of loads.

Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna

Members of Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (RS, CWI Sweden) and Students Against Racism played an important part in the strike preparations. Our weekly paper, Offensiv, carried reports and analysis with a very good response among the activists. On the day of the strike, RS had speakers at the demos in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Borås, Luleå and Boden.

At the Stockholm demo, there were speeches from refugees, several organisations and individuals: Students Against Racism, School Students Against Deportations, Young in Sweden and others. For RS, Natalia Medina spoke: “We’ve never got anything for free. Not a single right has come because the rulers suddenly realised that it was a good idea. Arguments and appeals to politicians and rulers do not work. It’s big mass movements, strikes and protests that make change”, said Natalia to enthusiastic applause.

Solidarity messages were read out from striking students in Kassel, Germany, and Tamil refugees in Britain. At one meeting preparing the strike, Sindicato Estudiantes in Spain, shared important lessons about school strikes via Skype.

Future action

It is a strength that the strike on 12.12.12 in addition to focusing on making the day’s activities a success also managed to look forward to continued struggle. The call for a protest day with strikes and demonstrations in January-February is a brilliant initiative that should be spread in all forums – trade unions, cultural, sport and tenant associations, for example. Closer coordination between the various centers of action, as well as discussions on the alternative to the government’s deportation policy, is a key to further steps forward.

The state and establishment are clearly concerned. Two weeks before the strike, the government announced a partial retreat they claimed could give permits to up to 8,000 refugees. However, it is subject to a string of conditions. Only those who arrived before 25 November 2015 are included. The young refugees must qualify for, and pass through secondary education and, after that, find a job. And this is to be implemented “by summer”.

Meanwhile rejections and deportation orders continue. The Monday before the school strike a group of refugee youth was deported. A number of young refugees have committed suicide this year. The government hoped that the announced retreat would calm the movement; instead, it is arriving at increasingly radical conclusions and applying increasingly radical methods.

The attempts to slow down the movement against the expulsions are driven by fear. Young people at the head of a fast-paced and fast-moving movement threaten to pull more and more people along in the movement against the Social Democrats’ and Green’s brutal refugee policy.

The struggle of recent months has already opened many eyes to the naked hypocrisy with which the Swedish government’s policy forms – exposing that the real “us” and “them” are youth and workers of all origins against the tiny elite who try to use suspicion against people on the run to divert focus from the fundamental contradictions in society.

The school strike represents an escalation that gives great hope of many more people being reawakened in the coming months – not only for the struggle for another refugee policy but also for another, socialist, society.

Rather than allowing May’s diplomatic sheepishness to pass unnoticed, the Chinese state-controlled media revelled in it. Beijing’s Global Times hailed her “pragmatism” and said she was right to resist “radical” pressure to engage in “mudslinging” over human rights.

In the days prior to May’s visit, Beijing’s local government in Hong Kong launched new attacks on the city’s partial democratic rights. Three opposition candidates were banned from standing in upcoming by-elections to the Hong Kong legislature. The by-elections are to fill vacancies created by a purge of pro-democracy legislators last year.

Demosisto banned

One of those banned was 21-year-old Agnes Chow Ting of the youth party Demosisto. She was banned on the grounds that the party’s manifesto stands for “self-determination”. This means it’s the party that’s banned rather than one individual. Demosisto won one seat in the 2016 elections only to have its legislator Nathan Law Kwun-chung disqualified along with five others in the “Oathgate” affair.

British ‘Lords’ Patten and Ashdown, who clearly know a lot about the evils of non-elected office, issued a similar plea. Chris Patten was a former Hong Kong governor and is from May’s Tory party.

“Golden era”

But these calls evidently went unheeded. May stressed a “golden era” of British-Chinese relations, using the slogan of her predecessor David Cameron, whose government signed mega deals for Chinese investment in nuclear power, railways and London’s financial sector. After May’s low-key visit, however, China expert Kerry Brown said relations were in more of a “bronze era”.

The Chinese media, heavy on nationalism, has taken great pleasure in reporting how foreign leaders including Trump, who waged furious attacks on China in his election campaign, have been house-trained by the Chinese dictatorship.

The British government’s loss of worldwide authority is more striking, given that technically it is one of the international guarantors of Hong Kong’s partial autonomy under the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. On his visit to Hong Kong last year for the 20th anniversary of the handover, Xi bluntly stated the Joint Declaration “no longer has any practical significance”.

May’s office in London denied accusations she had failed to raise Hong Kong during her talks with Xi Jinping. It said both leaders had restated their commitment to the “one country two systems” arrangement under which Hong Kong has a degree of autonomy. This is diplomatic waffle! Every attack on democratic rights in Hong Kong is carried out in the name of defending “one country two systems”, so such glib statements from Xi are meaningless and May’s team have knowingly played along.

British government’s silence

During a succession of moves to restrict democratic rights in Hong Kong, screen-out election candidates, introduce new repressive laws and jail opposition activists, many have called on Britain to speak up.

When Benedict Rogers, a senior member of May’s Tory party with an interest in Hong Kong politics, was refused entry to Hong Kong on Beijing’s orders last October, this prompted only a perfunctory protest by the British government. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, said he was seeking an “urgent explanation”. Similarly, and more importantly, when Hong Kong bookseller Lee Bo, a British citizen, was abducted by Chinese security agents in 2015 and weeks later resurfaced on Chinese television making a forced ‘confession’, the British government’s response was minimal. The abduction of five Hong Kong booksellers including Lee was used to spread fear in Hong Kong and step up media censorship against critics of the dictatorship.

The Chinese regime feels confident it can step up repression – already the most severe in 25 years – without encountering significant pressure from foreign governments.

May returned from China boasting of 13 billion US dollars in new business deals. Cash comes before human rights, evidently, but even these sums are not impressive by past comparisons. May had travelled with the biggest ever delegation of British business leaders. Britain’s attractiveness as a destination for Chinese capital took a knock after the Brexit referendum and so steadying its relationship with the Chinese dictatorship was the main aim of May’s visit.

One of the deals announced was for luxury carmaker Aston Martin to open more than 20 showrooms in China, worth 850 million dollars. This is irrelevant to the mass of China’s population who will not be queuing to buy an Aston Martin. It would take a Chinese factory worker 22 years, saving their whole salary, to buy the cheapest Aston Martin.

Correct address

Some democracy activists in Hong Kong, China and elsewhere have yet to fully grasp the fact that right wing politicians and governments are not on the same side, they will not and never have fought for democratic rights. Real and effective international solidarity comes from below, from workers, youth, anti-cuts and anti-austerity campaigners, a new generation of left wing feminists, anti-racists and migrant rights advocates. In other words, it comes from the very sections of the population that are battling against the big business policies of Theresa May and Donald Trump. These are the layers the Stop Repression in Hong Kong campaign is turning to.

International pressure is needed to protest the repression in Hong Kong and China. But our appeals need to be addressed to the right people.

Demosisto’s Agnes Chow is blocked from standing in March by-election with others likely to follow

Dikang, chinaworker.info

This article was updated on Monday 29 January

As widely feared the Chinese dictatorship has begun blocking pro-democracy candidates from standing in upcoming by-elections in Hong Kong to fill four of the seats left empty after the ousting of six opposition legislators last year. The move is the latest instalment in a creeping coup against the mass democracy movement.

Agnes Chow Ting, a 21-year-old spokesperson for Demosisto, a small student-led party with connections to the 2014 Umbrella Movement, has had her candidature for the by-election rejected on orders from Hong Kong’s Beijing-controlled government. Chow would have been almost certain to win back the seat, on Hong Kong Island, that was stripped last year from her party colleague, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, the chairman of Demosisto.

The three other by-elections, all to be held on 11 March, are in West Kowloon and New Territories East, both geographical constituencies like Hong Kong Island, and in the Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape functional constituency. Half the 70 seats in the Legislative Council (Legco) are assigned to undemocratic small-circle functional constituencies, reserved for big business and professional groups.

Nathan Law was one of six opposition legislators who were ousted from the Legco in the “Oathgate” affair. The six, whose politics are deemed undesirable by the Chinese regime, were retroactively disqualified on the initiative of the government using the law courts to rule their oath-taking as insufficiently “sincere”. It has become a tradition for some opposition legislators as a from of protest to add words to the oath like “democracy” and “universal suffrage” when being sworn in. The disqualifications followed an intervention from the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s so-called parliament which is no more than an echo chamber for the dictatorship.

Agnes Chow of Demosisto.

Eliminating the ‘radicals’

Law and colleague Joshua Wong Chi-fung were both also imprisoned last year on “unlawful assembly” charges along with 14 other democracy activists. This was part of a government orchestrated ‘pincer movement’ designed to eliminate the more radical sections of Hong Kong’s democracy struggle from competing in future elections. Anyone jailed for more than three months is ineligible to stand in elections for five years.

Other radical pro-democracy parties such as the League of Social Democrats, fronted by ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, have similarly been targeted for a combination of jail sentences and electoral disqualification, which is designed to keep them out of the Legco. The government hopes that by thus denying them a public platform and the financial resources that a Legco seat confers, and throwing their leading activists in prison, it can eradicate the more radical parliamentary groups leaving only ‘moderate’ and more malleable forces to speak for the democracy movement.

A Hong Kong government statement on Saturday 27 January announced the ban on Chow’s candidacy claiming she “cannot possibly comply” with election law requirements to uphold Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and the ‘one country two systems’ arrangement under which Hong Kong has been ruled by China since 1997. The ‘evidence’ used to exclude Chow is Demosisto’s 2016 manifesto which calls for “self determination”.

While Demosisto and Chow deny this means support for independence from China, and in fact have many times distanced themselves from groups that do advocate independence, Beijing has declared that it all means the same thing and so “violates” the Basic Law. In fact there is no such proscription on calling for independence in the Basic Law, which also purports to guarantee freedom of speech. In recent weeks, fearing a ban, Demosisto changed the “about us” section of its website to delete the statement in Chinese, “Demosisto adopts ‘democratic self-determination’ as the highest agenda”.

It was also widely feared that another pan-democrat, Edward Yiu Chung-yim, would be banned from standing in the by-elections. Yiu was one of the six disqualified from the Legco last year. He has been nominated to contest the West Kowloon constituency and right until the final day of nominations he had not received approval to run.

The same day that Chow was banned, Yiu was sent four questions by the ‘impartial’ election officials and told that his answers would determine whether or not he was eligible to run. The questions included whether he accepted the NPC Standing Committee’s ruling on oath-taking, which formed the basis for the disqualification of himself and five other legislators. Another question related to a visit he made to Taiwan in 2016 as a guest of the pro-independence New Power Party. There is no basis under Hong Kong’s electoral laws for such political vetting of Legco candidates.

On Monday 29 January, the election authorities announced that Yiu would be allowed to run. Rather than supporting the government’s line that it is only following legal procedures in relation to the by-elections, the decision to block Chow but not Yiu is tactical, to defuse an even bigger backlash within society and give an illusion of legality, each case weighed on its “own merits”. Put simply, Chow and Demosisto represented a bigger fish than Yiu who was a relative unknown within the democracy movement ahead of his disqualification last year. It’s possible, but not certain, that the pandemonium caused by Chow/Demosisto’s exclusion, including within the legal profession and international news media, caused the government to stop at one opposition candidate rather than bag a brace.

Unfortunately, there is nothing about the way the government or the election authorities (who admit they took “advice” from the government) have acted that excludes further undemocratic bans in future, either of prominent pro-democracy figures in general or other disqualified legislators like ‘Long Hair’ and Lau Siu-lai in particular. On the contrary, every new attack suggests the government is moving incrementally, taking one step at a time, pausing to absorb the reaction and then preparing its next move. The seats of ‘Long Hair’ and Lau are not among the four to be contested in March because the appeal court has still to hear the case against their disqualification.

Election rigging

“The decision to block Agnes Chow and [possibly] Edward Yiu is the second phase of election rigging for the Legco,” said Pasha of Socialist Action (CWI in Hong Kong).

“The first wave was when the government organised the disqualification of the six legislators, nullifying more than 12 percent of the total votes cast in the 2016 Legco elections. The decision to rig the by-elections in this way makes it clear that unless the current corrupt and undemocratic government is brought down there will be nothing remotely resembling free or fair elections in Hong Kong. It’s all basically fixed from now on,” he said.

Reactions to the ban on Chow have been swift and furious. Demosisto issued a statement saying the disqualification was “illegal and groundless” and “payback against an entire generation”. The youth who helped to spark the Umbrella Movement protests, bypassing the more conservative and reticent pan-democratic parties and leaders, are the main targets of the current political repression.

Joshua Wong of Demosisto, who was sentenced to a second jail term last week for another Umbrella Movement-related ‘offence’, explained how the government has tightened the ring of repressive rules around the opposition:

Wong’s warning needs to be heeded. Unless a movement is built that can repel the government’s onslaught, future elections could exclude candidates who oppose Article 23, because that’s also part of “upholding the Basic Law”, or oppose the infamous NPC ruling of 31 August, 2014, which laid down “fake universal suffrage” for Hong Kong, thus triggering the Umbrella mass protests.

Step-by-step repression

As an example of how the government’s case is shot through with falsehoods, Nathan Law was not blocked from standing in the 2016 elections and was subsequently elected as the youngest ever lawmaker, despite standing on the same manifesto that Chow has now been disqualified for. Law, as we know, was ejected from the Legco much later on an entirely different pretext – his allegedly “invalid oath”.

In the 2016 Legco elections the government introduced a new loyalty pledge for candidates and this was used to disqualify five candidates, even some who signed the pledge, all from the ‘localist’ pro-independence layer. The government was testing the ground and only targeting the fringes. Even the majority of ‘localist’ candidates were not blocked from standing at that time.

What has changed? Only the timing. Had the government in 2016 moved to ban Demosisto from standing, as it has now done, or instigated a broader purge of ‘radical’ candidates such as those subsequently disqualified after winning their seats, this would have triggered a massive popular backlash. That could have unleashed a landslide defeat of the pro-Beijing establishment in the elections.

As it was, the opposition increased its share of the total vote from 56 percent to almost 60 percent in the 2016 elections, handing the pro-government camp its biggest electoral setback for 20 years. These elections as we explained at the time manifested a very clear ‘Umbrella factor’ coming just two years after the 79-day-long mass struggle. Of course, because of the ‘gerrymandered’ structure of the Legco, the government camp still emerged from the elections with 40 seats against the opposition’s 30.

“Mass action is the only answer”

The government has tried to cover its political repression with a veneer of ‘legality’. But this is fooling fewer and fewer people. Maya Wang of NGO Human Rights Watch was clear: “The contorted legal arguments advanced by the Hong Kong government in disqualifying Chow can barely hide the political intentions of its decision: that this is another act in Beijing’s play to chip away Hong Kong’s autonomy.”

A hastily called mass protest outside the Legco on Sunday evening drew a crowd of 2,000. Socialist Action (CWI in Hong Kong) has again raised the need for a one-day Hong Kong-wide strike as the only measure powerful enough to challenge the government’s deepening authoritarian crackdown. Students, who last week staged protests against the suspension of two student representatives at Baptist University for their part in a dispute over Mandarin language tests, are a key layer who could lead the way by building for a city-wide school strike to defend democratic rights.

With Chow ruled out of running it seems former Democratic Party politician Au Nok-hin will be nominated to replace her as the standard bearer of the pan-democratic opposition, although he has no connection to Demosisto and does not really fit the political profile of the layers that support Demosisto. These have been disenfranchised.

By manipulating the elections in this way, inventing new rules as it goes along, the government is excluding not just the more radical opposition groups but also their hundreds of thousands of voters. These groups are forced, in the interests of keeping out the pro-government candidates, to relinquish their seats and voters to more ‘moderate’ opposition candidates who haven’t fallen foul of Beijing’s screening criteria. But the ‘moderates’ have progressively lost support and credibility among big sections of the democratically-minded electorate.

The ‘radicals’ gained 25 percent of the total vote in 2016 (567,000 votes). They are a collection of very diverse groups distinguished not so much by ideology (ranging from mild left to far right in the case of the ‘localists’) as by their more combative stance towards fighting the Chinese dictatorship’s growing control. Groups like Demosisto, which does not stand for much else other than opposition to the current authoritarian regime, emerged because of growing frustration among the masses over the passivity and lack of fight of the traditional liberal pan-democratic parties. This was especially after the failure of the Umbrella Movement to win any democratic concessions from the government.

“The government have clearly had a strategy since the end of the Umbrella Movement,” says Socialist Action’s Pasha.

“They are using a combination of election screening, disqualifications, political trials and jail sentences in an attempt to kill off the democracy movement, starting with its most struggle-orientated layers. This is also a preparation for a new push to introduce Article 23, to fully ‘mainlandise’ Hong Kong’s political system, which can only be stopped by determined mass action such as strike action.”

How to rebuild the mass struggle?

Since the current authoritarian onslaught began, at first cautiously in the prelude to the 2016 elections, then accelerating immediately afterwards, the leaders of the main pan-democratic parties have offered no fight back other than verbal protests. In this they are continuing where they left off during the Umbrella Movement, which they ‘supported’ rather nervously and uncomfortably while seeking to contain the movement and guard against ‘radicalism’.

Similarly, the pan-democrats have approached the by-elections in a business-as-usual manner despite it being clear that the government was totally capable of employing more dirty tricks to rig the outcome. Its aim is that even if establishment candidates are not capable of winning these seats, which is unlikely in five of six cases, the seats will not be allowed to fall back into ‘radical’ hands.

Lacking a clear perspective, many sections of the movement are stunned by the de facto banning of Demosisto as an electoral force. Endless time has been expended on closed-door pan-democratic discussions over a ‘Plan A’, ‘Plan B’, and ‘Plan C’ – to line up substitute candidates – rather than rousing the masses and warning of the high probability the by-elections will be rigged and that this in turn may become the “new normal” for Legco elections in the future.

We warned already last year, in July, just one week after the court’s disqualification of four legislators, that the by-elections could be manipulated by the government and therefore, while the by-elections were important, it would be a mistake to make them the main or sole focus of activity:

“It also makes it much more difficult for the opposition to fully reverse this attack in the by-elections, which can be further delayed and held under extremely undemocratic conditions – by banning some or all of the disqualified legislators, and by holding the by-elections simultaneously to increase the pro-government camp’s chances.” [chinaworker.info 21 July 2017]

The Chinese dictatorship, the power that really decides, does not want to see the Legco purge of last year overturned through the ballot box. That would represent an embarrassing political defeat for the regime and a victory for the masses, which could then translate into further challenges to the authoritarian agenda, such as the ongoing political clamp down on university campuses and of course the plans for Article 23.

The only way to successfully resist the government’s anti-democratic manoeuvres is to build a mass campaign of civil disobedience, which must recognise the true character of the current political regime and draw the necessary conclusions. The lesson from the failure of the Umbrella Movement is that, despite its enormous potential, it held to a one-sided faith in occupying the streets, as if this could ever be enough to defeat a regime like the Chinese dictatorship. At no time before or since has there been a serious discussion on the need to organise strike action, starting for example with a mass students’ strike, and then building towards a territory-wide general strike to demand the resignation of the unelected election-rigging government.

This would need to raise the demand for immediate free and fair elections to a genuine People’s Assembly to replace the undemocratic and powerless Legco, and the formation of a government of the working class majority committed to a programme of sweeping social change to bring about affordable housing, rent control, a universal pension system, big increases in poverty-level wages, and to completely break the stranglehold of a few pro-Beijing capitalist tycoons over Hong Kong’s economy.

Such a movement even in a territory of just 7.3 millions would echo like a nuclear explosion across the border in China, inspiring the long-suffering Chinese masses to join the anti-authoritarian struggle. And that of course is what’s called a game changer.

Stop Repression in Hong Kong

Stop Repression in Hong Kong is an international campaign which Socialist Action helped to initiate, appealing for solidarity protests from workers’ and youth organisations around the world. The campaign staged protests in 22 cities worldwide from Berlin to Colombo to Vancouver last October against the Chinese state’s repression in Hong Kong. Socialists and left members of parliament in Ireland and Germany, and leading trade unionists in Mexico, South Africa and Britain have signed the online petition to support democratic rights in Hong Kong and China.